Advertisers and other providers of content on the Internet compete for a user's attention on a webpage. While users typically select and view a webpage for its primary content such as a text-based news article located in central area of the page, the remaining real estate of a webpage offers advertisers and other content providers an opportunity to display advertisements and other content to a user. However, to avoid cluttering a webpage with numerous advertisements that might annoy users, website providers typically limit the number of advertisements on a single page as well as the amount of space on the page that may be occupied by advertisements and other unsolicited content. For instance, a single banner ad may scroll across the top of a typical webpage while two or three narrower block advertisements, links, and other content may be displayed unobtrusively on the far left or right sides of the page.
Larger ad spaces at the top of a page typically command a higher price from advertisers due to their increased likelihood of attracting the user's attention and communicating an advertiser's message. Content providers have begun providing multiple advertisements at the top of a page (and in other discrete locations) in a time-multiplexed fashion. Just as a rotating billboard can rotate continually between two or more advertisements, a single ad space of a webpage can rotate between multiple ads. For instance, a single banner ad on one page may rotate every five seconds between an ad for a razor and an ad for a new soft drink. In some cases a single ad space may earn more revenue from two advertisers who time-share the space than it would from a single advertiser who does not time-share the space.
However, traditional systems rotate such time-multiplexed advertisements in a random or otherwise arbitrary order and provide equal time for each ad. These and other drawbacks exist with current systems and methods.